A Guide To All-grain Brewing In A Bag

[poppa joe]

Thirsty Boy....
I have one of those Warmer things....But the little ball leg things go rusty..
Cheers
PJ

 

[PistolPatch]

Good on ya Spills - LOL!

Deaves - ROF! Whoops! Just realised I got you mixed up with 'devo' who sent me a funny PM re reading long posts hence my joke above about the PM and reading above!

I did bloody well on the wife front yesterday. I also got a message from the rook saying if I was ever in VIC that his wife has a sister - lol! It's more likely though that I'll get to QLD first so please send me a pic of your wife just so I know how much time to spend on your question (Not that I'm shallow or anything :unsure

Anyway, just re-reading your question. From what I'm reading, the way you were doing it was what everyone does. What I'm wondering is what you are doing now. I'm still a bit unclear on this but would love to know exactly what you are up to.

Thirsty and Capretta: Re your long-term stability question. One of the WA AHB'ers dropped in for a beer last night and I was brave enough to pull out the lager that I brewed for the last QLD swap. I was scared too as originally it was insipid and then when I arrived here, I thought it tasted worse. So, this beer was brewed about 5 months ago, has been across the Nullabor at 40 degrees and it now actually tastes bloody good. Not real happy about waiting 5 months for a result though!

Better go and do some work,
Pat

 

[capretta]

on the subject of "escalator mash" i used to step mash from 35 degrees and never had a problem with dough balls or clumping. the water mixed through really well. but since i moved to straight infusion ( water at or slightly over 68ish degrees) i spend quite some time stirring and pushing the mash around to make sure i have good separation of the grains..

 

[Zizzle]

I had a problem with my last couple of BIABs. I don't drink that much so they spend a fair while in the keg (~2 months). Towards the end, they were tasting very soapy, to the point of being undrinkable.

I googled soapy taste as a beer defect and found some mention of the beer being left too long on the trub during ferment. Now I know this didn't happen (grain-to-brain in 7 days for one of them), so it must have been happening in the keg. I will also admit that I didn't use koppafloc or irish moss during the boil, and wasn't very careful about how much hot/cold break made it into the fermenter, and eventually into the keg.

What does this have to do with BIAB? I see a great deal of hot break at the bottom of my kettle. Some makes it into the fermenter.

I have virtually no experience with batch/fly sparging, but I'm wondering if using either method, the grain bed may filter out at least some proteins before they make it into the kettle, meaning less trub.

I was at Brad's the other day and noticed he had much less trub in his kettle at the end of the boil, and he was batch sparging.

My latest beer I have been more careful about leaving more trub behind, and have also filtered the beer into the keg. So I don't expect the same problem. Just something to keep and eye out for.

BTW I also remember thinking that Pat's Xmas case swap beer tasted soapy. Maybe I'm a bit sensitive to tasting that particular defect. But that beer would have also been a BIAB right pat? And filtered?

 

[PistolPatch]

Yeah that lager was a BIAB. I wrote about it a few posts ago - took 5 months to come good!

I don't know what a soapy flavour tastes like - I'll have to get someone to show me so I can't offer any thoughts on that. Be interesting to see if anyone else has the same problem though.

One thing I used to do was tilt the kettle etc to get more wort out. Now I just let it sit for ten minutes after the chill finishes (as I agitate the chiller during the chill) and then auto-syphon it. Whatever the auto-syphon gets, it gets! (Leaves about 3 litres behind in the 70lt Robinox). I also use the finings at ten minutes.

Talk to you soon mate,
Pat

P.S. I brewed NRB's All Amarillo Ale that you did for the swap - the one I loved. The first one I got distracted on but I still loved. The second one is superb!

 

[PistolPatch]

BIAB Post Summaries

I think these are nearly all done, If anyone hasn't posted there's to the thread yet can you whack it up and then I can refer to it in the Post# 3.

Zizzle Thinking more on your post. Did you find any soap flavour in your swap beer? I loved that one - couldn't fault it at all.

Had another taste of that lager yesterday and didn't like it at all! Both times I had it in the last week I had it on a clean palate and had 2 totally different reactions. Looking back, this has been going on ever since I brewed that beer - a love/hate relationship. So, looks like nothing has changed in what actually must be 6 months!

Spot ya,
Pat

 

[Doogiechap]

BIAB Post Summaries

I think these are nearly all done, If anyone hasn't posted there's to the thread yet can you whack it up and then I can refer to it in the Post# 3.

Zizzle Thinking more on your post. Did you find any soap flavour in your swap beer? I loved that one - couldn't fault it at all.

Had another taste of that lager yesterday and didn't like it at all! Both times I had it in the last week I had it on a clean palate and had 2 totally different reactions. Looking back, this has been going on ever since I brewed that beer - a love/hate relationship. So, looks like nothing has changed in what actually must be 6 months!

Spot ya,
Pat

FWIW Pat I think the Lager tasted fantastic ! Very clean and well balanced IMHO (certainly not soapy). Perhaps I need to try it again to see if I still like it .
Cheers
Doug

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Summary of Posts 301-350 in this thread:

With the stresses of Christmas subsiding, people are returning to the subject at hand and presenting good solid experience and science.

Blake (finite?) reports good results on his first BIAB AG brew (303 - 315, 317), but not so great with his second (313). He appears to have left some sugars in his grain.

Deaves and PostModern explore more traditional mashing volume:grist ratios and hint at what could become an immersion heater vs gas flame debate (305, 306, 307, 310)

FNQ Bunyip reports rinsing his grains with a small quantity of warm water to gain more sugars. (314)

Phonos points to a published article by Dion Hollenbeck which lends credibility to full-volume mashing (318) which Thirsty Boy reinforces within a long, but important post (319) and subsequently addresses the question of bag squeezing and tannin extraction. (321)

Blake (finite?) reports a marathon no-chill Imperial IPA as his third BIAB brew but does not recommend it to others. (325, 327) Also posts a huge quantity of data and interpretations from his three BIAB brews. (331)

In response to a question from blackbock, Blake posts pictures of mashing with a drawstringless bag. (334)

Thirsty Boy discusses the lautering process and sparging as relevant to BIAB and batch-sparging - well worth several reads. (338)

Thirsty Boy posts proposing the use of a fermenter as a lauter tun to enable more conventional liquor:grist ratios during the mashing process. (339) lucas questions the method on the grounds that microbial exchange between boiled and unboiled wort might be bad. (342)

Darren, Ross and Thirsty Boy explore tannin extraction a little further. (344 - 347)

 

[PistolPatch]

Tried to post this message but it says I have too many emoticons. I've been mucking around here for a half an hour reducing emoticopns and it still won't accept my post. You'd reckon if you spend 3 hours writing, reviewing and refining that you wouldn't have to deal with this! Agh!

This is the last time I am going to bother to keep my post count down answering a heap of questons in one post. I am way too polite!

Anyway, I'm going to try splitting the post into two...

Part 1!

Finally, after two months, my broadband is working. Can't tell you guys how much easier this makes things. Hopefully my post quality will improve significantly as I won't be sitting up until all hours waiting for the next page to load. Phew! (Doesn't mean my posts will be any shorter but. I have some catching up to do )

Doogie: Thanks for posting the feedback mate. I swear that beer is the weirdest I have ever brewed. The other night I really liked it (except the aroma didn't seem to match the beer.) Last night it was very average but my mate thought it was very good. Old_Dog, AussieClaret and myself actually tasted it a few days before the last QLD swap right after his Aussie's brown ale and it truly tasted infected! Two hours later, after some food, it had somewhat returned to drinkable

Next time I taste it and like it, I swear I am going to drink whatever is left in that keg!* (Will have Batz's Altbier ready for you soon)

Ned the Bunyip: Haven't thanked you for your post about ten posts ago! I think you and Eric8 (who sent me an email) are the only guys who have read the re-write of posts 1 to 4! LOL! Anyway, if you two think it's OK then I'm happy. No one has said they're no good so I'll just keep re-writing in that new format. (Ned's been brewing for 20 years and brews more BIAB beer in a week than I do in a month - only during the dry season but!)

Spills: Top summary mate! Thanks also for all your help and correspondence which truly makes a difference. (I think Spills is going to become the BIAB Wiki Master!) Donya!

RichardR asked some questions in NRB's All Amarillo APA thread which I thought might be better to answer here.

Some of the questions are not purely BIAB related but a lot of people who read the BIAB thread are just moving into AG and so will readily relate to these questions. Also, Richard has only been on the forum a few months and he lives in SE QLD so some of the following is a bit further off-topic. Zizzle needs a BIAB mate there so we better get him up and started asap

 

[PistolPatch]

OK Richard,

Great questions mate and I notice you live very close to Browndog. If you don't go to the Brewday at Browndog's I'm never going to answer any of your questions again Seriously though, go. Browndog is a mate of mine for life. He invited me to my first Swap in QLD and farewelled me from my last. Zizzle will be there as well and can teach you a lot about BIAB - he was the first electric BIABer! So, post to that thread and tell them that PP and FNQBunyip (another mate for life) sent you as our representative. Then you can meet all our other mates for life!

I'm going to paraphrase your questions to kill a few birds with one stone which I hope doesn't detract from the very polite way in which they were asked...

I have looked for the All Amarillo APA recipe in your post on BIAB but have not been able to find it.

This link was incorrectly worded. Have fixed it now. Well-spotted! That was the second time I buggered that up! Anyway, it is the first link in the first post of this thread.

I am yet to get my first BIAB going and was interested of your comments on this brew.[/b]

Here's why I put the link to the recipe in Post #1...

Zizzle brewed his QLD swap beer from that recipe and even though certain hops were not available and therefore had to be substituted on the brewing day, it was my favourite beer of the swap. Zizzle and I have similiar tastes and neither of us would say that it was the best beer of the swap though, for me, it was. Plenty of the other beers required more skill (such as my lager lol!) but most were not beers that a wide range of people would not have the palate to appreciate - especially in quantity! (For example, Jye loves doing OTT beers in the swap but they are brillaintly brewed and balanced.)

NRB's recipe produces a beer that, if you have kegs, you can brew up today and one week later, have every palate lust after it. So, even if you don't like your first AG, all your mates will and this will definitely give you confidence! In the last 2 weeks, I have been totally blown away by the comments of this recipe by the non-brewing fraternity. An experienced brewer may not think it special (I must ask Doogie what he thought?) but for anyone that like a Little Creatures Pale Ale, this recipe is ten times better.

It also only requires 2 hop additions and these are early in the boil (60 and 40 minutes). For the beginner's first few brews, the end of the boil can be hectic. Not having to worry about hop additions late in the boil is yet another bonus. Someone wrote to me today (can't remember who so I'll say it now..) asking why I didn't include the Skunk Fart Ale as a beginner recipe. The reason is two-fold. It requires multiple hop additions (4 or 5 if my memory serves me correctly compared to the 2 of NRB's) and it produces a beer of high IBU's that a new brewer's palate might not necessarily be attuned to let alone their mates.

The final reason why I included this recipe as a possible first BIAB was it's tolerance level. I've only brewed it twice. The first time, I was doing exactly what I am doing now - answering questions on AHB while having a beer but I was brewing as well! I would have written about this somewhere else but the end result was that I had to do a second boil of the 8 litres I had draining from my bag (which is meant to be thrown in at the start of the boil) that I'd forgotten - whoops! My longest BIAB brew day ever!

I even threw in 8 grams of extra hops - don't know why - and the beer still ended up a delight but only 80% of what the correctly brewed version turned out to be. Oh, and that was another cock-up. NRB, in his recipe had the flavour hps posted first. I whacked them in as the boiling hops! The rest of his hop schedule and recipe I followed exactly. Yum!

I took the first batch to Asher's brew day here in Perth and came home with an almost empty keg so, inless I drank it all, I'm confident in saying that NRB has come up with a simple, tolerant, widely-appreciated recipe.

Also, how do you bottle your beer from the keg??

Agh!!!! The best question of all which no one knows the answer too I reckon!

I think when anyone tries to answer that question we often have in the back of our minds, how would you bottle from the keg if you were doing this for a swap beer or a competition? I've never thought of it this way before tonight actually! Mmmmm. Interesting...

OK, well, let's forget the Swap beers (they'll be hardest to bottle for as they will probably have to wait for ages to be drunk.) Let's forget about competition beers (better still, ask Ross as he does it all the time with top results.)

Let's look at what will bring most joy - being able to take a few bottles directly from your tap around to a mate's place. In other words, the bottles will be devoured in the next day or two....

Here's what I have discovered in the last two weeks. Make sure that your beer line is balanced. For most people, this means having 2m of standard beer line between the keg and the tap. Once you have this, it means you can pour a decent beer from your tap. It also means that you can leave your CO2 on 24 hours a day/7days a week with no pouring probs. Sure, if you get a gas leak, you've lost a cylinder, but I can tell you that the delight of pouring clean beer on a first pull outweighs any fear of the unlikelihood of losing a cylinder of gas. If you live in the same room as your CO2 cylinder and it leaks, you'll probably die but you won't know, so where's the problem on that?

Anyway, what I have donne lately, is ten minutes before I want some bottles, I throw my nice glass beer jug in the freezer. I also chuck the PET Coopers vottles in as well but I don't think this makes any difference. I pour a jug and then I fill the bottles from the jug.

Simple as that! And it's all fine by the time I arrive wherever I have to be.

So, not a total answer Richard but a practical one!

Do you use an adjustable regulator on your 3 Ring burner???

I do mate but it is not necessary. It's a bloody good question too! My first brew worked a treat without an adjustable regulator and then it went downhill from there. I finally bought an adjustable regulator and things improved. Pretty sure that Screwtop (one of the funniest and most imformative buggers you'll meet - also in QLD) suggested drilling the holes out of your ring burner with a 1.0 to 1.5mm drill bit. His advice must have come about a day after Brad_G and I did the side-by side BIAB versus Batch test because Brad's burner was up the duff and we spent half the day driving around trying to find a camping shop that sold adjustable regulators!

Actually, from memory, the advice came simultaneously from Screwtop and one of the camping shop guys - drill your holes out. It was Screwtop though who offered the logic. What happens, with your ring burner is that the green paint melts and fills the holes on the first burn. Drill or poke it out and no worries. I'd do the 1mm bit first as Brad reckons his outer two rings are tops but he has lost his inner ring.

Anyway Richard, that's it from me. I should have finished on something witty - the last two sentences of the last paragraph would keep Sqyre and InCider (your fellow QLD'ers) going for days!

Looking forward to seeing your picture at Browndog's Brew Day.

No pressure but!
Pat


*Had another crack about a third a way into this post. Tastes verygood tonight! Agh!

 

[3GumsBrewing]

Hi guys,

Quick question, how would Cold Steeping go with the BIAB method, I am finding I am running out of time these days and thought that for my next beer (a dry stout) I might try cold steeping overnight.

Would anyone recommend following the usual method of adding all the grain to the bag, popping it into the pot with around 38L of water, putting the lid on and leaving for 24 hours. Then the following day boiling and hopping as normal?

Anyone tried this?

**Loving this BIAB business!!**

Cheers
DK

 

[therook]

davekate,

have a look at this link, its not steeping but mashing overnight.

Also check the link Johnno has posted in this thread as well

link

Rook

 

[PistolPatch]

Thank God for Rook! I would have no idea how to answer that!

Anyway guys, the BIAB re-write is going to have to wait. I seriously need to take a break from AHB for reasons explained here

Hope to see davekate's and many other names on Bunyip's BIAB Register when I get back.

Happy brewing to you,
Pat

 

[poppa joe]

Gave a couple stubbies to my LHBS.....My first full BIAB...
HE LIKED IT...ALL Gone now anyway...(Wonder what i done wrong???????)
PJ
Hard to get grains here the only one selling closed down last week...

 

[poppa joe]

OOOPPPS Sorry WRONG Attachment.....
PJ

 

[Hashie]

In the name of home brew science, I decided to try what Pistolpatch says not to do.
I added my grains to the heating water at 35 Deg and allowed it to heat with the water to 66 Deg.

Never, ever again!

2 major problems I found;

1. my efficiency went through the floor. My first 2 BIAB's had 70 ~75% efficiency. Yesterday 55% :angry:

2. even with lots of agitating during and after heating to 66 Deg. I burnt a hole in the bloody bag :blink:

So from here on in, I'll be getting the water to temp, then adding the grain bill.

Cheers

Edit; spelling

 

[PistolPatch]

Proud of you Hashie!

I'm so sorry that you burned your bag mate. That's a *******. On the plus side (for us anyway) that's very interesting data. It reflects what Capretta found above when he batch sparges that way.

Thanks for educating us all mate.

:super:
Pat

P.S. I still want to refrain from writing on AHB as much as possible for a while so please excuse me if I don't write anything here for a while. I am trying to increase my brewing knowledge a bit at the moment though by asking some questions. I'm sure that you guys will find the answers being given here on ways to measure efficiency as interesting as I have.

 

[Hashie]

Cheers Pat, no big drama with the bag, had a spare just in case.

Will be doing another brew on Wednesday, so it's all good.

 

[jimmysuperlative]

Summary of posts 251 300 in this thread:

drK still unmoved from his position that BIAB will produce low attenuation, dextrinous wort and high finishing gravity challenges BIABers to post actual S.G. and F.G. results. (Fair enough!)

Zizzle, PistolPatch, Maxt et al provide records for BIAB beers

wobbly, using the "All In One" principle(catalyst for BIAB method), weighs in with his results (263). wobbly reports pleasing results and favourable comment from other traditional AG brewers.

hughman666 -who started out BIAB and moved to more traditional AG brews- shows us some side-by-side comparisons BIAB/Traditional AG hughman666 reports no noticeable difference in taste and figures show little difference in OGs and FGs. (265)

Blake joins the ranks with his first BIAB (interesting start to brewday forgetting key component of BIAB - THE BAG !!!) but, recovers well.

deaves also reports a successful first BIAB.

wobbly, who was using the All-In-One concept linky, decides the method does not produce beers of a quality attained using more traditional mashing methods and returns to his tried and tested brewing method. wobbly cites chill haze, sweetness (finished beer) and also dissatisfaction with some of the equipment being used in his All-In-One method.(277)

Zizzle posts pics of his BIAB rig featuring bag hoist and action pics of wort in rolling boil using 2 x 2200W electric elements.(278)

drK points to wobblys experience as more proof that BIAB produces high beta amylase and poorly attenuated beers.(279)

BIAB brewers counter that BIAB is producing good beer, is a good transition from K&K to AG, shouldnt be knocked until you try it etc with some concession that BIAB is still in development as a method and it is important to look at ways to improve it.

PostModern suggests dough in with a traditional liquor/grist ratio of 2.5/kg. Mashing for 60mins, then adding rest of water to rinse out extra sugars as a way of combating the beta amylase issue.
A few brewers point out that PoMos idea takes away from the one vessel character of BIAB but, the input is appreciated as constructive.

After more reports of acceptable beers made using this method, and results indicating reasonable to good efficiency, PostModern (300) makes the following observation:

(Dec 27 2006, 02:11 PM)
From the theory that Dr K is preaching, the worts should be dextrinous. ie in thin mashes the alpha amylase will perform at a normal rate, but beta amylase will be retarded, thus leaving longer sugar chains that the yeast can't ferment, thus leaving sweeter, underattenuated beers. From what people are posting, this doesn't seem to be actually happening.

 

[The King of Spain]

Guys why don't you (mods) put the summary replies in a seperate thread, new brewers still have to sift threw a lot of posts to get to the "summarys"

Just a thought